Hahn finally back in the driver's seat

Former Mater Dei baseball player Cory Hahn sits behind the wheel of his new customized Toyota van in front of the school Friday morning. SAM GANGWER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Victor Bautista, a grounds keeper at Mater Dei High School attaches a school decal to the new customized Toyota Van donated to former Mater Dei baseball player Cory Hahn, who was paralyzed during a game his freshman year in college. SAM GANGWER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Former Mater Dei baseball player Cory Hahn, who was paralyzed during a game his freshman year in college, sits in his wheelchair in front of the customized Toyota van that was presented to him by a donor and the school. SAM GANGWER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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DAle Hahn helps his son, former Mater Dei baseball player Cory Hahn out of the new customized Toyota van presented to him by donors and the school Friday. Hahn was paralyzed during a game his freshman year in college. SAM GANGWER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Former Mater Dei baseball player Cory Hahn's father, Dale shows the custom controls in his son's new Toyota van at the school Friday. Hahn, who was paralyzed during a game his freshman year in college, was presented with the van that has been customized for him to use. SAM GANGWER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Cory Hahn drives his new customized Toyota van on streets around the Mater Dei campus. Hahn, who was paralyzed during a game his freshman year in college, was presented with a Toyota van that has been customized for him to use. SAM GANGWER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Former Mater Dei baseball player Cory Hahn sits behind the wheel of his new customized Toyota van in front of the school Friday morning. SAM GANGWER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

SANTA ANA -- Cory Hahn slipped his right wrist inside the Tri Pin adaptive grip on the steering wheel, cupped his fingers around the top peg and looked — his blue eyes those of a thrill seeker — into the rearview mirror.

"So, where do you want to go?" asked the 20-year-old, proud to be back in the driver's seat. "I'll go anywhere."

With his left arm, Hahn gently pushed a lever attached to the accelerator and drove himself toward independence, toward another milestone he can log in miles on the odometer of his week-old, white, fully customized Toyota Sienna SE Rampvan.

"In the hospital, they said I'd never be able to drive," said Hahn as he maneuvered the van out of the Mater Dei parking lot Friday afternoon and joined the traffic on Edinger Avenue. "Obviously, I can."

The doctors told the former Mater Dei All-America outfielder and left-handed pitcher dozens of things that he would never be able to do after he made that ill-fated, head-first slide on Feb. 20 in the third game of his college career at Arizona State.

He stole second base. A collision with a fielder's leg fractured the C-5 vertebra in his spine, robbing him of his motion from the neck down.

From then, he knew he was a quadriplegic. He heard a list of to-don'ts. No baseball. No walking. No running. No driving. No normal.

But the stubbornly determined Hahn did not want to believe it. He even refused the motorized wheelchair, insisting on finding some way, any way, to use his few upper-body muscles that weren't deadweight to get him from place to place.

He returned to ASU last January, taking a full course load and following lectures with a notetaker and an iPad. He started physical therapy at the Disability Empowerment Center, lifting increasingly heavier weights with his biceps and down on the floor for workouts so intense he has mat burns on his elbows.

That same competitive spirit that he used to become the 2010 Orange County player of the year, California's Mr. Baseball, a member on the gold medal-winning 18U Team USA squad and a 26th round selection by the San Diego Padres remains.

These days, Hahn competes against his body, pushing himself to do more than he did the day before and crossing things off that list of impossibilities.

Once embarrassed to be fed in a restaurant, Hahn passed on dinner invitations for three days until he taught himself how to lace the fork between his fingers and feed himself.

Once too proud to have has father take him to his classes, he told Dale Hahn, who quit his Orange County sales job to help his son adjust to his new challenging life, "Go do your thing. I'll see you for lunch."

Once told "No" or "Never," Hahn responded, "No way."

He still watches baseball but hasn't tried to slide his hand in a glove or toss a ball. That would hurt but not physically.

"It kills me sometimes to watch baseball, seeing guys like Bryce Harper and Manny Machado, guys I once played with, make it to the majors," he said. "I think, 'I could've been there too,' then I shake myself out of it and remember that I have more important things to work on."

"On my own." Hahn uses those words frequently.

He has grown more confident having made it this far, seizing every opportunity at independence his body will allow. Though he had yet to regain use of his legs, driving is a monumental step for the young man intent on walking again.

An anonymous donor approached Mater Dei president Patrick Murphy at a basketball game last spring, offering to purchase a $75,000 Toyota van adapted by Braun Mobility that Hahn could one day drive.

"I was speechless," Hahn said, remembering the day he got the call. "I've been dependent on my father or my roommates to take me everywhere, and this was the key to being able to get out on my own."

When he learned about the possibility of getting an adaptive van, Hahn began taking driving lessons to re-learn what he had done for four years since he was 15 with a learner's permit.

Home since May, he spent three sessions for a total of 10-hours with an instructor at Casa Colina Center for Rehabilitation in Carlsbad, mastering his new controls. Handles control the gas and brake. Buttons open and close the doors and release and retrack a passenger-side ramp.

"The important part was getting myself strong enough to drive," said Hahn, who worked out all summer on Mondays and Wednesdays at Project Walk in Carlsbad and Thursdays at the Goodwill Training Center in Santa Ana.

He and his father drove all around their Corona home when then got the car a week ago. They even stopped for food.

"When we went to Togo's and got a sandwich," Hahn said, "it was such a good sandwich because I knew I drove there to get it."

Hahn hit the freeways this past week, driving solo from Corona to Santa Margarita to attend a going-away party for his former Monarchs teammate and catcher Konnor Armijo.

"When I pulled up, my friends were like, 'Whoa!'" Hahn said. "They didn't believe me when I said I could drive."

His arms are strong enough that he raised a Murphy's gift package containing a Mater Dei license plate frame, window decal and bumper sticker from Murphy above his head on Friday.

That afternoon, Dale Hahn lifted Cory from his wheelchair into the driver's seat and handed his son the keys. He settled into his six-way powered captain's chair that swivels so that he can one day make the transfer from wheelchair to behind the wheel himself.

"We're working on that now," Hahn said. "Like everything, it takes practice."

With his mother, Chris, in the passenger seat, Hahn will make the six-hour drive to Tempe, Ariz., on Monday to move back into the off-campus home he shares with three Sun Devils baseball players and begin the fall semester at ASU on Thursday.

He will be a junior, majoring in business, and a student-coach for the Sun Devils baseball team.

His father will follow in the Ford F-150 truck that used to shuttle Hahn everywhere.

"I haven't seen him home much since he got the car," said Dale Hahn, laughing.

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